


Such a Fragile Thing

by patchfire, raving_liberal



Series: Story of Three Boys [106]
Category: Glee
Genre: Abortion, F/M, Gen, M/M, Underage Drinking, Underage Smoking, Unsafe Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-28
Updated: 2013-02-28
Packaged: 2017-12-03 21:52:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,848
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/703023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/patchfire/pseuds/patchfire, https://archiveofourown.org/users/raving_liberal/pseuds/raving_liberal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hannah Puckerman's sophomore year of high school, 2018-2019</p>
            </blockquote>





	Such a Fragile Thing

Hannah can tell from the look on Ana's face that she's about to be interrogated. Technically she wasn't gone any longer than planned, but she'd still put off their planned Monday shopping because of the weekend's events, without any real explanation. 

"What happened?" Ana demands as Hannah climbs the steps at the Met. "You were gone all weekend and then cancelled."

"My brother," Hannah begins, then stops. "I'm going to explain it all." As they walk in and head into the first gallery, Hannah explains exactly who Finn is, to both Noah and Kurt, without detailing the triad-y nature of everything. Then she has to explain why she doesn't talk about Finn as much, and what he does, exactly. Of course Ana's met him, but none of them really explained who he was or introduced him beyond "Finn".

"He's a football player. A famous one," Ana repeats. "And you didn't tell me?" Ana looks almost embarrassed and Hannah remembers how she had wondered once if Ana thought Finn was cute or something. Hannah doesn’t get it, but some people apparently do think that.

"We don't talk about it," Hannah tries to explain. "And he's not going to be anymore, not now. He didn't have any surgery so he's done. That's what Allison said, that's what Kurt said, and Noah just said finally and some Hebrew I admit I've already forgotten."

"If your brother is more observant than you are, that doesn't say much." Ana laughs and threads her arm through Hannah's. "So he'll be in New York now? No more mysterious traveling?"

"Only completely unmysterious traveling," Hannah agrees. “Which, yeah. That’ll be nice. I mean, Noah and Kurt bribed me last year! But they were gone a lot. And I’ll introduce you properly, last name and everything.”

“It’s good they’re all so close, I guess,” Ana says, and Hannah suppresses an urge to laugh. Yeah, they’re _close_ , despite whyever Finn actually married Rachel Berry. 

Hannah’s known one thing since she can remember: Rachel Berry is someone to be around as little as possible. Clearly, she should have spent less time thinking up amazing insults and more time reminding Finn of that fact. 

 

The first time that Hannah’s at Finn’s new apartment, the one Rachel made him move into, she bakes brownies, hangs out with him until Syd gets off from work, and steals a pack of cigarettes. 

Hannah thinks it’s possible she figured out Finn was smoking before Noah even, but she’s never asked. It’s not really important, but she knows that he has cigarettes, and it’s not hard to find where they’re hidden. 

If he notices a pack is missing, he never asks her about it. He probably doesn’t notice, since there is an open pack plus at least one more pack left, after she takes one. Hannah’s also been observing all of them for so long that figuring out how to hide the smell of cigarette smoke isn’t that hard. She adapts it a little, because she has longer hair and she’s a girl who can get away with wearing a stronger scent, but the basics she swipes from Finn. Breath mints everyday, she decides, even the days she doesn’t smoke. Scented lip balm. Body spray or perfume, including scented hair products that have the same fragrance. 

She coughs and coughs through the entire first cigarette, lit with the matches she grabbed from her internship restaurant. She inhales, though, and by the end of the cigarette, she feels a little calmer. A little less like she has to look over both shoulders at once. As an unexpected bonus, she realizes that if Zeke shows up, she can shove the lit end of the cigarette into his eye or up his nose or in some other way cause serious damage.

Hannah _loves_ the idea of hurting Zeke. 

 

Hannah doesn’t really keep track of where Noah and Kurt are going, even though when she asks, one of them will remind her that “it’s synced with the online calendar, Hannah.” Wherever it is they’re headed, it apparently cannot be cancelled, not even with Zeke running around Manhattan like the complete jackass he is. That means Hannah’s planned evening out with Ana is now an evening in with Ana and Finn, which Hannah thinks is going to be hilarious. Ana keeps claiming she doesn’t have a crush on Finn, but Hannah’s pretty sure that’s a lie. 

“Fraggle-face, I’m fifteen, not five,” Hannah says to Finn after Noah and Kurt leave. “We’re not playing that game.”

“Cherry-O’s pretty much the best game ever, buttbreath,” Finn counters. “You used to love when I’d play it with you.”

“It’s _Hi Ho_ Cherry-O,” Hannah grumbles. “And I was a lot younger.”

“Younger than what? You’re still the same amount younger than me that you ever were,” Finn says. “So sit your ass down and we’re going to play _Cherry-O_.”

“Couldn’t you have found an old _Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader_ or something?” Hannah asks. “This is demeaning. And tell Noah I used a ‘vocabulary word’.”

“I didn’t want to embarrass you in front of your friend when it turned out you weren’t smarter than a fifth grader,” Finn says. 

“Monkey-knees!” Hannah glares at Finn, but before she can come up with anything else to say, she can hear Ana knocking at the door. Ana’s knocking even sounds excited, and Hannah sighs a little as she stands up to answer it. 

“Hi!” Ana grins at Hannah, stepping inside. “So what are we doing?” She dumps her bag by the door like she usually does, then goes into the living room, looking at Finn like he’s going to remove the sling and lift the building in his hands or something equally ridiculous. 

“Hey, nugget!” Finn says. “Nice of you to hang out with me and fry-legs tonight. Don’t get too close, she’s extra greasy.”

Ana giggles, and Hannah rolls her eyes. “Don’t listen to sweaty-pits. He brought a _kids_ game.”

“No, I brought Cherry-O,” Finn argues. “Ana’ll play Cherry-O, won’t you, Ana?”

“Sure!” Ana says quickly, and Hannah knows that Ana couldn’t have figured out what Finn was saying that fast. 

“Yeah, did you not hear what he said, Ana?”

“Don’t pay attention to her,” Finn says to Ana. “She’s jealous because I still hold the Cherry-O record.”

“There’s a record?” Hannah says. “You’re delusional. Too many sacks.” Then she winces and changes the subject. “Anyway, aren’t you just here to be the muscle? Punch people for us?”

“Only if somebody _needs_ punched,” Finn says, grinning. “Do you think there’s somebody that needs punched tonight?”

“You’re probably hoping there will be,” Hannah says, shaking her head and then stopping herself when she realizes she just watched Noah do that at least twice that afternoon. “But seriously. Hi Ho Cherry-O. No.”

“Well, if you’re too good for Cherry-O, you should go make some cookie dough from all that stuff I brought over. I got the organic free-range eggs that cost like nine dollars a thing, so Puck won’t freak out over salmonella this time,” Finn says.

“We should have found eggs that came pre-laced with Xanax,” Hannah says, standing up and rolling her eyes. “Do you think the Xanax would have lost its potency when he baked the dough?”

“Hey, be nice,” Finn says. 

“Like you weren’t thinking it!” Hannah says over her shoulder as she walks into the kitchen. “Did you bring chocolate chips or oatmeal?”

“Dark chocolate and those little caramel bits. The hard kind. What are those called again?”

“Toffee. You know that, dorkface.” Hannah pulls out a bowl and then starts grabbing things from the refrigerator. “I think you forget things just to annoy me!”

“Yeah, yeah,” Finn calls. “All about Hannah.”

While she starts making the dough, she can hear the spinner and Ana giggling _way_ too much for a sophomore in high school who’s playing Hi Ho Cherry-O. Hannah’s also sure that Finn would really _like_ Zeke to violate the restraining order while he’s there. Hannah would rather never see him again, but since that seems unlikely, it might as well be while Finn is there. He’d certainly enjoy it the most.

 

The smoking isn’t something that Hannah decides to give up, even after she’s completely certain that she won’t be needing to use a cigarette as a weapon. She’s gotten used to it, the feeling, having something in her hands and mouth, bumming a pack or two off someone older or grabbing some of Finn’s packs. She likes standing on the street during lunch period with the other smokers, slowly circling the block so no one accuses them of loitering. 

She’s made new friends, too, amongst the lunchtime smokers and the other people at her internship restaurant who smoke on their breaks. Everyone shares, everyone bums a cigarette or two, and it’s collegial, to use one of her fucking vocabulary words. If she starts skipping a few classes to smoke or hang out with her friends or just because she doesn’t fucking _care_ about British literature, what does it matter? Her grades are fine. Maybe not as high as before, but they’re fine, and she’s still doing everything she needs to do in the classes she actually cares about. 

Noah tries to make her go to therapy. She’d gone along with it the year before, going every week for two months, until school started, and then every other week for another two months before she told Noah she was fine. The therapist had agreed, except apparently had told Noah and Kurt that she might need more therapy in another year or so. Zeke showing up and skipping classes are, apparently, indicators that she needs therapy, at least to them, and they make appointments that she cancels or skips. She doesn’t need to ‘talk about her feelings’. She doesn’t have any kind of mental health disorder. She’s not in some fucked up relationship that no one really knows about. She doesn’t need therapy, even though that seems to be Noah’s answer to everything. Not enough money? Therapy! Someone dies? Therapy! Feeling stressed? Therapy! 

Of course, Finn’s doing some music therapy program, so she should be probably be grateful they haven’t tried to force her to sing about her feelings yet. God knows that all three of them spent their formative high school years doing exactly that, so it’s not really surprising that Finn’s making a career out of it. Hell, even Noah and Kurt are, judging by the story ideas and lyrics she hears them discussing. 

She just needs them, all three of them, to leave her alone. There’s nothing wrong with her, there’s nothing wrong with her habits, and there’s nothing wrong with her friends. If Noah wasn’t such a snob now, he’d realize that. 

Really, the weirdest thing about high school in New York is that there are four or five distinct schools in the same building. They aren’t connected in any way, except that New York City Public Schools owns the building and runs all of the schools. The other way they’re connected is that when Hannah does go outside to smoke, they don’t all go to class together. Hannah’s still not sure which school Preston attends. Linus is, she thinks, actually at her school. Emily is at the design and construction school, and Sophia-Grace is at the one called ‘Manhattan Bridges’, which tells Hannah nothing about the school. She’s pretty sure that it doesn’t actually involve bridges, though. 

They don’t talk about how old they are, or classes, or anything stupid like that. Linus is already eighteen, though, so sometimes he gets sent three blocks to get cigarettes, after he lets that fact slip once. He won’t supply them regularly, but Hannah can count on a pack or two a month through him. 

Hanging out to smoke shifts gradually to hanging out for awhile after school, too, and then on the weekends. Emily’s parents are never home, and Hannah starts spending more time in Brooklyn with the four of them at Emily’s place. Emily’s mom even meets Noah once, which fools Noah and Kurt into thinking Hannah’s being supervised or something. 

She doesn’t need supervision, but they seem to think she does, and so does Ana’s mother. She’s pretty sure she wouldn’t have become friends with Ana if she’d realized that Noah and Kurt had already met Nina, but she’s not a jackass, so she doesn’t stop being friends with Ana over it. It _would_ be nice if Ana would stop bugging her to quit smoking, but Hannah thinks maybe they’ve come to a truce about that. She’ll stop asking Ana if she wants to try it, and Ana will stop asking her to quit. 

Hannah’s pretty sure she’s not doing anything that Noah didn’t do before he turned seventeen. She’s definitely not doing anything splashy enough to get the police to notice. Not even when they’re not at Emily’s, and instead in areas of the city where the police pay more attention to ‘youths’ who might be up to no good. Yeah, it’s probably shit Noah and Kurt wouldn’t be _happy_ about, but where do they really have room to talk? She hasn’t gotten suspended, expelled, or arrested; despite skipping class, she’s still passing everything. She’s fine. Absolutely fine. 

 

“Hannah.” The living room is dark, making Hannah think Noah and Kurt are asleep, or at least in the bedroom, and she jumps when she hears Noah. “It’s about an hour past curfew.”

“So?” Hannah shrugs, even though she’s not sure if Noah can see her. “Obviously you knew I was fine, or you would have called the cops already.”

“There’s being concerned, and there’s tying up the cops from issues more real than a rebellious teenager,” Noah says evenly, and for a moment, Hannah almost hears her mom talking to Noah, years earlier. She resists the temporary urge to soften and instead rolls her eyes. 

“My curfew is stupid. New York’s the City That Never Sleeps. Why should I be confined to a curfew?”

“Because you still have to go to school on a schedule that suggests you do need sleep, and sleep during the nighttime hours.” Hannah can hear Noah stand up. “Kurt and I gave you a curfew—a much later one than many _sixteen_ year olds have—because it’s important that we vaguely know your whereabouts, and that you do well in school. And you’re still fifteen, Hannah.”

“I’m fifteen and I wasn’t doing anything dangerous.”

“Hanging out in East Harlem isn’t dangerous?” Noah walks closer, and Hannah can actually make out his incredulous facial expression. 

“Stop being a snob!”

“I’m not being a snob! It’s a fact, the crime rate is higher near Ana’s house. You know we love Ana and her family.”

“Yeah, right.” Hannah rolls her eyes. “You’re not a snob, but you sure do _love_ your Zabar’s and your Upper West Side address, don’t you? Forget where you came from, _Noah_?”

“I know exactly where all of us came from, and that’s not even the issue. The _issue_ is this is the fifth time you’ve broken curfew in the last two weeks. The issue is the smoking you think we don’t know about. The issue is whatever else you’re doing when you’re out until two am. I _know_ what happens when you’re fifteen and out at two am! Nothing fucking good happens!” Noah’s voice gets steadily louder, and Hannah sneers before firing back. 

“Yeah, you would, wouldn’t you? What are you going to do about it?”

“Ground you, for starters.”

“I don’t have to listen to you! Either of you!”

“Yes, you do, Hannah. You do have to listen to us.”

“You aren’t really my parents! You’re just my brother who’s only ten years older than me, and I don’t have to obey either of you!” Hannah’s hand tightens around the strap of her bag, cutting into her palm, and she wants to lash out and hit something, punch a wall, _something_ other than listen to her big brother act all holier than thou. “You fucked up so many things at my age, Noah! Who are you to tell me what to do?”

“Someone who knows just how awful it feels later!” Noah yells back. “We may not be your parents, but we _are_ your guardians, and this shit has to stop, Hannah. How many emails have we gotten by now from school? How many classes have you skipped? We have no idea who you’re with half the time. You were more responsible at twelve.”

“Yeah, well, at twelve I still had a _mother_!” Hannah shouts, even though part of her brain knows she’s not really making any sense. 

“That has nothing to do with this!”

“It has everything to do with this! You can’t make me stay here!” Hannah stalks off to her room, slamming the door; as much as she wants to leave, to tell Noah ‘fuck you’, it’s well below freezing outside and the truth is that all of her friends, even the new ones that Noah hates, probably _are_ asleep by now. She’s tired, and she’ll figure everything out after she’s slept. Maybe. 

 

“You are _not_ wearing that.” Noah is glaring at her, outright glaring, and Hannah glares right back. 

“Tina gave it to me.”

“I don’t care!” Noah throws up his hands. “Why are you all conspiring against me? I bet Finn put her up to it. What’s next, a Mets cap?”

“Baby.” Kurt breaks in, thankfully, and Hannah darts back down the hall. She doesn’t need her brother-guardians making out in front of her, though she supposes she’s lucky they at least confine themselves to the bedroom before clothes come off. It doesn’t change that she needs her earbuds sometimes, but it’s something. 

By the time they leave, Noah’s just glowering, and he doesn’t say anything else about her Red Sox T-shirt. Tina _did_ give it to her, but Hannah had been the one to decide, her first spring in New York, that she was going to be a Red Sox fan. Tina’s influence didn’t hurt, of course, but it was still Hannah’s decision. 

The fact that it makes her Yankee-fan brother get huffy was and is most of her motivation, she’ll admit, but she gets to cheer with Tina and, since the Mets hate the Yankees too, with Finn sometimes. 

This year, the season is opening with the Red Sox at Yankee Stadium, which is apparently important enough for two things to happen. One, for Noah to suck up his pride and let Finn buy tickets for a whole group of them, and two, for Hannah to skip school in a Noah-and-Kurt-sanctioned fashion. The game—or the possibility of _not_ going—has been held up as a potential way to punish her more than a few times, but finally it’s opening day and Hannah’s on the train, wearing her Red Sox gear and talking to a fellow fan while Noah explains to some other Yankees fan how his sister is a great betrayer. Kurt just looks amused by the entire thing, and more than a little smug about whatever he’s reading on his phone. 

“It’s so very sad,” he announces to Noah and Hannah as they get off the subway and head to where they’re supposed to meet Mike, Tina, and Finn. “So very, very sad that Rachel isn’t able to be here.”

Hannah snorts back a laugh. “The only person who wanted Rachel here is whomever she’s actually spending the afternoon with.”

 

Hannah doesn’t obsess about when she’s late or when her period’s going to show up. It’s not a stand of some kind, it’s just that she’s been frighteningly regular since she started halfway through sixth grade. A perfect twenty-eight day cycle that starts on Tuesday, without fail, for four years. 

When she wakes up on a Wednesday in May, and she still hasn’t started, she doesn’t pretend she doesn’t know what it means. She just mutters ‘shit’ under her breath and leaves ten minutes early for school. She asks to go to the bathroom during the last ten minutes of math, like she usually does, but she actually goes to the bathroom, instead of getting in a smoking break before her fun classes actually start. Hannah doesn’t try to fool herself; she knows what being late probably means, even if it’s just one day late and even if she’s used a condom religiously. 

The plus sign that stares up at her after just two minutes isn’t a surprise at all, but it’s still not something she wants, it’s not something she can tell Noah, and she has to figure a way out of it. Hannah wraps the test in toilet paper and then a paper bag, shoving it all in a freshman English classroom as the bell rings, and then she goes to the office, convincing them relatively easily that she’s actually sick. She probably looks ill: a little pale, red around her eyes, and for once, she hasn’t been smoking the entire day. They send her home, but she doesn’t go home. 

She walks to the Starbucks on 49th Street, because it’s not the closest Starbucks, but it’s the closest that’s also on the way towards the 50th St stop for the 1 train, and the 1 train will take her home, or towards Tina at Columbia, or towards Syd, in Lower Manhattan. 

Because she can’t tell Noah, and telling Noah means she can’t tell Kurt, and it means she can’t tell Finn, and there’s only two people left in New York City that she can tell. Nina would tell Noah. No matter how much the idea of telling _a_ mom, Ana’s mom, appeals to her, Nina would tell Noah. Hannah has to figure out how to take care of things without Noah knowing, because as horrible as the year has been, as many bad things as she’s thought about Noah and yelled at him, there’s a line she can’t and won’t cross, and she’s already overheard enough, already knows the doubts she’s caused. The too-bright plus sign was just confirmation that Noah had been mostly right, all along. 

Hannah orders a venti coffee and sits in a corner, thinking, for a long time. She almost calls Syd twice, but in the end she calls Tina, for two different reasons. 

Syd knows about Beth, and Hannah’s almost positive she’s met her more than once, but Hannah doesn’t know how much Syd really _knows_ about Beth, and high school, and Noah and everyone else. Tina knows. Hannah won’t have to say anything other than “I can’t tell Noah,” and there’s a good chance Tina will know what Hannah needs immediately. Tina was there, and Tina knows where they came from. 

More than that, though, Hannah’s pretty sure Syd has never, in her entire life, worried about an unplanned pregnancy. An unexpected visit from her period, sure. An unexpected visit from the metaphorical stork? No. Definitely not. 

 

Tina spends a lot of her time in the law library. It’s convenient, yes, but more than that, it’s comfortable, a sort of home on campus. She’s not going to miss law school, not at all, and not just because of the long study sessions before exams, but when she walks across the stage on a Wednesday later in the month, she’s going to miss the law library at Columbia. 

Her phone starts to vibrate, the buzzing still making some noise, but less than a ringtone would, and she hurriedly scoops it up, vacating her table temporarily to duck into a hallway that doesn’t echo very badly. 

“Hannah? It’s the middle of your school day. Are you okay? Is everyone okay?” Tina asks, even though she realizes that she’s not giving Hannah a chance to speak. She can’t stop herself, though; they’ve all taken Hannah in, in some ways, and Tina’s heard just enough over the past few months to know things aren’t really _good_ right now for Hannah. 

“I need to talk to you,” Hannah says quietly. “I need your help.”

“Right now?”

“I know it’s your exam time soon.” Hannah draws in a deep breath, audible over the phone. “I can’t tell Noah, Tina. I can’t.”

Tina closes her eyes, certainty and dread mixing in her chest and settling heavily in her stomach. “Okay. Okay. You’re not at school?”

“No.” Hannah giggles without any real humor in her voice. “Starbucks.”

Tina laughs, too, in spite of herself. “Okay. Meet me at the Starbucks near Columbia in forty-five minutes?”

“Yeah. Okay.” Hannah’s voice is shaky. “Thank you.”

“Of course,” Tina says, then ends the call, hurriedly packing her things and heading towards the Starbucks. Once she’s there, a little bit of research is all she has to do. She’ll wait for the confirmation face to face, but there’s only one thing Tina can think of where Hannah wouldn’t tell Noah, no matter how strained things are between them. 

 

When Hannah walks into her third Starbucks of the day—the first one had been Noah’s, before school—she sees Tina immediately, and she can tell that Tina understands. “Thanks,” Hannah says, dropping into the seat opposite Tina. “I just— I have to do this. I have to. Without Noah knowing.”

“I know.” Tina nods. “But we have to talk a little bit about this, Hannah. I don’t know details, but you’ve not had an easy year. And if this can happen, you’re putting yourself at risk for a lot more lasting problems.”

“I know.” Hannah winces. “I always insist on a condom, but condoms can break.” Or, she silently acknowledges, she might not have, not when she was drunk, and Preston only uses one because she insists. 

“So I know you aren’t going to like it, but I have a few things I want from you. Give me your assurances, and mean them, and we’ll take care of things quickly.” Tina smiles in a way that Hannah decides is encouraging, whether Tina meant it that way or not. “How about a ‘girls’ weekend’? I’ll play it off as needing a study break. I’ll meet you as soon as your classes are over on Friday, a late appointment, and by the time you go back home on Sunday night or maybe even Monday after school, you should feel better.”

“Okay,” Hannah agrees. “Whatever you need.” It’s true, too. She doesn’t want to be pregnant. She doesn’t want to give a baby up for adoption, and she doesn’t want to keep a baby, not when her sixteenth birthday is still a few weeks away. She wants an abortion, and whatever she has to agree to, whatever she has to do, she will do. The embryo or whatever it currently is has to go. 

“Okay.” Tina smiles again. “I’ll see what I can do about this weekend, and I’ll send you an email. If not this weekend, then next weekend, definitely. Right now, though, you need to go home. The school will probably have let Noah and Kurt know you left early, and even if they don’t know, it’s not that long before you’d be home anyway.”

“Yeah.” Hannah nods. “I know. Just— thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” Tina looks like she’s considering saying something else, but doesn’t. Hannah can guess, though.

“It’s my wake-up call,” she agrees. “I promise.” She digs around in her bag and hands Tina the two packs of cigarettes in there, as well as the lighter. “Can’t promise I won’t start again when I’m eighteen.”

“But then it’s legal, and that’s a little different,” Tina says. She stands up and gives Hannah a hug, then walks Hannah to the subway. Hannah sits on the train and closes her eyes. She’s also going to delete Preston’s contact information. Not Linus, and not Sophia-Grace, but she deletes Emily’s contact information, too. A wake-up call. Fuck. And she has only herself to blame for needing it in the first place. 

 

Tina makes the appointment easily. Five-thirty in the afternoon, that Friday, and thank god the laws in New York mean Hannah doesn’t need anyone’s permission or a waiting period. No one either of them know is likely to see them, either, if that matters to Hannah; the office is on East 40th, and Tina can’t even think of someone who would be in the area. 

The money is a little bit of a complication, though; Hannah can’t use her insurance, if she really wants to keep it a secret from Noah. And Tina thinks that is the right decision, for Hannah, but more than that, for Noah. She doesn’t hear as much about Noah and Kurt’s lives as Mike does, right now, but she knows enough. She knows the look on Mike’s face, the one that says ‘I went to school, good schools, for six years, and this is all I have to show for it?’, and she sees it on their faces, too. She knows the look on Noah’s face, that money’s tight, because she sees it on her own face in the mirror, sometimes. And Tina remembers sophomore year, and the look on Noah’s face after Beth was born, for months afterwards. 

No, Hannah’s absolutely right. Noah doesn’t need to know. Noah _can’t_ know. 

But Tina doesn’t have the money sitting around, and there is one person who does. One person who would do anything for Hannah, anyway, if he knew that was who it was for, and the third thing Tina does, after making the appointment and sending Hannah the promised email, is pick up the phone and call Finn, asking to meet him for lunch the next day. Tina suggests a place on the Upper East Side, so no one asks questions about why, and when Tina arrives, Finn is already there and seated. 

“Thank you,” she says to Finn as she looks over the menu. “I know this is a little odd, but this kind of request, I didn’t want to do over the phone.”

“Sure,” Finn says slowly. “Is everything ok with you and Mike?”

“Oh, yeah, we’re fine,” Tina reassures him. “It’s— well, I can’t say who it is. But it’s someone we both know, so that narrows it down a bit already.” She closes the menu and meets Finn’s eyes. “And this person probably would ask you themselves, except they want this kept quiet. Very, very quiet.”

“Ok,” Finn says. “As long as nobody’s hurt or in some kind of trouble, I can keep it quiet.”

“Nothing is illegal and no one’s hurt.” Tina chews on her bottom lip for a minute. “I suppose you could argue it would be trouble if it didn’t get taken care of, though. A bit old-fashioned of us, even.”

“Uh-huh.” Finn frowns. 

“No one calls it that these days, though,” Tina says. “Haven’t in years. But I think there are some potential unpleasant memories that could be brought up. Things from Lima.” She breaks off as the server arrives and they order, and she takes a sip of her water, willing Finn to understand what she’s saying without her having to explicitly say it. 

Finn’s frown deepens. “So, why me?” he asks finally.

“Because Mike and I don’t have the funding available, and because the person can’t pay for it the normal way one would. Since that would generate paperwork.” She pauses. “Because you would do it in a heartbeat if the person asked you directly.”

Finn doesn’t stop frowning, but he nods. “Ok. How much?”

“Six hundred. Well, six-fifty,” Tina amends, because she doesn’t know if Hannah will need to fill any kind of prescriptions. 

“Ok,” Finn says. He pulls out his phone. “Let me know where to put it and I’ll transfer it now.”

“My account’s fine, I suppose,” Tina says, pulling out her own phone and putting her information on the screen before sliding it across the table. Finn transfers the money quickly, then puts his phone away. He doesn’t say anything until after the server brings their food.

“And everything’s going to be ok?” Finn asks. “After this?”

“Oh, that was part of _my_ conditions,” Tina says. “Certain things have to stop.” 

Finn nods. “Ok. Let me know if you need anything else, then.”

“I will.” Tina manages a bit of a smile before she starts to eat. “Thank you. From me, but also from.” She waves her left hand slightly. 

“Yeah,” Finn says, with a tired smile. “I know.”

 

Noah had looked almost skeptical when Tina and Hannah had said Hannah was going to have a girls’ weekend, but when Hannah gets home on Monday afternoon, the skepticism is gone and Noah greets her more cheerfully than he has in a long time. 

Hannah cooks dinner, because otherwise it would be yet another evening of a frozen meal from Trader Joe’s, and before Noah and Kurt leave for their chorus rehearsal, she and Kurt load the dishwasher. 

“Preston stopped by here this weekend,” Kurt says mildly. “Wanted to know why we’d told you to block his number. He also asked us what made Sophia-Grace and Linus so special, that they didn’t get blocked. Noah started talking and threw in some musical theory terms as if they were psychological terms, which seemed to work.” He raises an eyebrow. “Anyone else we should expect to show up here yelling?”

Hannah can feel herself turning red, and she winces and shakes her head. “No. Probably not. It’s not really Emily’s style. She did send some choice messages online.”

“Ah, yes, I know that type well.” Kurt smiles at her. “Well, let us know if that changes, though?”

“Okay,” Hannah whispers, and her mind goes to the email that Tina sent the week before. It had been a little more harsh in some areas than Hannah had expected, and a little less harsh than expected in others. The last paragraph had been what stood out, though, and she can see it in her mind. 

_We love to tease Noah about the Yankees, and we all_ try _to tease Kurt about something, but the fact remains, Hannah, they did something (and are still doing something) that most people in their position wouldn’t have done. My understanding is that you could easily be in Lima, with Burt and Carole and Audrey, and that wouldn’t be the worst thing ever. But you are here in New York, with your brother and an entire community, and please, please, don’t take my friends for granted. They love you. I know you love them, whatever you might say._

“Hannah? Are you okay?” Noah’s voice interrupts her thoughts, and she realizes she’s still standing in the kitchen, and Noah and Kurt are in the hall, about to leave. 

“Oh. Sorry.” Hannah shakes her head a little. “Just thinking. Hey, do you want some dessert? I could make something.”

“Something chocolate?” Noah says hopefully at the same time Kurt says, “Cheesecake,” and Hannah laughs. 

“Chocolate cheesecake. Got it. Have a good rehearsal, guys.” She shakes her head and turns to the refrigerator, mentally inventorying it as they leave. Maybe chocolate cheesecake is all it really takes.


End file.
